


Thundershowers

by airandangels



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 21:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airandangels/pseuds/airandangels
Summary: A short not-quite-story about Makoto's life before she met her best friends.





	Thundershowers

Sometimes I like to imagine the lives the Inner Senshi had before the story of  _Sailor Moon_ began.  We know bits and pieces, more for some than for others.  One thing I had hoped  _Crystal_  would do, but it didn’t, was to explore more of the characters’ pasts through flashbacks and actually establish some new information about them.  If I were making a new  _Sailor Moon_  series it would a) do this for the present-day characters and b) make a deeper exploration of what went on back in Silver Millennium days.

Today I was thinking about Makoto.  I don’t think Makoto grew up in the city; I think her family lived somewhere suburban shading to semi-rural, with space between the houses and a lot of greenery.  There was a meadow with a pond in it right by her house and she grew up chasing dragonflies and catching frogs and picking wildflowers that she brought home to identify with her dad’s big field guide.  (Makoto’s dad worked in a plant nursery; he would have liked to be a botanist but didn’t get the grades to go to university when he was young.  He studied wildflowers and local plants and grew roses at home.  He met her mother when he got roped in by a lady from the local gardening club to talk about wild salad vegetables and edible flowers to a cooking class.)  

When her parents died, she was left without any close relatives who could take her in and got shuffled off to a cousin of her mother’s who was clearly only doing her duty by her.  She and her husband didn’t enjoy children, especially not a child who’d always been encouraged to run around and play outside and not worry about getting her clothes muddy, and still less a child who got into fights at school.  The only person in their small, strictly neat house who seemed happy to have Makoto there was her mother’s cousin’s elderly mother, who let her call her Grandma, asked her to water her windowsill plants for her and liked her to sit with her and drink tea and listen to old stories.

Makoto was honestly trying to adapt and thought she had begun to make some progress, so it really hurt when she was told that the local school didn’t want her back next term.  It hurt even more when her mother’s cousin told her that she was such a big girl now she was ready to be independent, and they’d found her an apartment in the city where there were lots of good schools to choose from, and she’d get an allowance to live on from the family trust and be just fine.

She went and sat with Grandma in her room for one last cup of tea.  There had been a thunder-shower a little earlier and the thin little tree outside the window was still dripping.  Grandma asked her to bring in the windowsill plants because she thought there would be more rain later, maybe hail, and she didn’t want them to get bruised or too soaked.  She was quiet for a long time while the tea grew cool and Makoto sat patiently beside her.

Finally, Grandma said, “They don’t really want me here either.  I make the best of it.  You’re young and healthy and you can live on your own, and in the long run you may be glad that you got a fresh start.”  She reached over and patted Makoto’s hand.  “I know that doesn’t help you very much now.”

“I’m going to try to be good at my new school,” Makoto said softly.  It was so hard to get “good” right when so often “good” seemed to mean being quiet and polite and not doing anything when something  _bad_  was happening right in front of you.  It felt wrong not to take a swing at it.  But then even the people she’d tried to help were afraid of her, and she didn’t know if she’d done a good thing at all.

Grandma’s knotty little hand tightened on hers.  “You’re already good.  You’re a good girl with a kind heart and sooner or later you’re going to find people who understand you.  Make sure you write to me.”  Faint thunder growled outside, and Grandma began to cluck about what a good thing it was she’d brought the plants in, and soon it was time to go.

Makoto wrote to her about settling into her apartment and getting to know the neighbours and the local shops.  Grandma wrote back with advice about budgeting and cooking for one.  She wrote to her about getting thrown out of the first school.  The reply was, “I know you tried and I know you will keep trying.”  She wrote to her about the second school and for a while her letters were full of Tomoko.  The replies took a little longer to come, and the handwriting was weaker, the messages sometimes not entirely making sense.  She wrote to her about the third school, and Usagi, and Ami, and Rei, and one day she finished a letter with the words, “I’ve found my people, Grandma.”

She didn’t get an answer to that letter.  A few weeks later her mother’s cousin came to visit carrying a small crate with the windowsill plants packed into it, their leaves bruised by the crowding and the journey.  Tucked into it was a letter Grandma had been writing to Makoto before she had to go into hospital for the last time.  It wasn’t finished, and the writing wasn’t very clear, but the first words were, “My dear Makoto, I’m so happy.”


End file.
